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Monday, March 31, 2014

Things to Think About

Things to Think About is a FREE app including 100 prompts to inspire writing or thought.

For younger students, the prompts can be read by clicking the audio icon The app was developed by teachers and students in Michigan. Categories include Classroom, Fun, Rules, Family, Future, Safety, Feelings, Health, Scenarios, Friends, Responsibility, and School. Read more about their story.

Write About This Free

Write About This was created by a 4th grade teacher. The easy-to-use app offers a variety of visual images along with writing prompts. A Write About publishing tool is also included in the app allowing students to type their journal entry and record audio. The entry can be saved within the app or exported to the camera roll. Only one Write About entry can be saved and only part of the images and prompts database is available from within the free version. A full version of the app is available in the App Store(currently $3.99). In addition, more than one custom prompt can be created and saved. Read more here.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Let's face it - our students love games! As educators, we can capitalize on this interest and leverage game-based technology for classroom gains. BrainPOP offers a collection of games that are organized by subject. Although the videos, lesson ideas, and other resources are based on a subscription, the games are free to use and cover a variety of topics. These resources would work especially well in a classroom utilizing a SMART Board. Go to http://www.brainpop.com/games/ and explore.

Thursday, March 6, 2014

While working with a great resource, Thinglink, I realized teachers may need a supporting resource if they do not have a Photoshop license when wanting to combine several images together into one. Two free photo editing tools, Canva and PicMonkey, work well in conjunction with Thinglink(view my previous post here). The two photo editing tools allow users to create a collage and save the final image for uploading into Thinglink.

PicMonkey

It is not necessary to sign up for PicMonkey, but users may want to create an account and upgrade to Royale status for $33/year for additional features and an ad-free work environment. Find help articles for PicMonkey here. Copied below is an example of a collage created with PicMonkey. The images were inserted by browsing my computer and then patterned papers were imported from the PicMonkey color swatches.

Canva

Canva can be used for much more than just collages. Social media, presentations, blog graphics, facebook covers, documents, and cards can all be created in Canva and helpful templates are supplied for the user needing a creative push. Sign up for Canva here and find help articles here. Below is an example of what I made with Canva when combining several app images I had on my computer. The text graphics and background pattern were imported from the Conva library. View their promo video here.